Constitutional Crisis

We're reaching a significant showdown moment between the White House and Congress. Think Progress notes that Scotty sounded anything but conciliatory today to the idea of Congressional hearings on the illegal wiretapping scandal. This is from today's briefing:

Q: And my question is, does the White House take this into account, will it try to talk to them, will it participate in the hearings?

MR. McCLELLAN: Like I said, and the President has said we’ve briefed members of Congress on more than a dozen occasions.

In other words, they've cooperated all that they're willing to cooperate. Hearings on this issue absent the cooperation of the executive branch won't mean anything.

MR. McCLELLAN: And in terms of discussions about this, the President talked about this at his end-of-the-year news conference. We shouldn’t be talking about intelligence activities, particularly in a time of war, in a public way. This is a highly classified authorization –

Q Not anymore. I mean, it’s public now.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, it still is. It still is highly classified. The President has talked in a very limited way about the nature of this authorization and what it’s designed to do, and how it’s limited. And so we will continue to talk with members of Congress —

It's so secret that the President let slip a couple days ago that it was limited to incoming calls.

Q Will you cooperate with a congressional hearing?

MR. McCLELLAN: — the Attorney General has been talking to additional members of Congress about this authorization, so that they do understand why this tool is so vital in our efforts to prevail in the global war on terrorism.

Q But will you cooperate with a hearing?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I’m not going to get into talking about ruling things in or out from this podium. We’ll talk with members of Congress and make sure that they’re briefed and kept informed, as we have been.

They actually think the American people are with them on this (hence Scotty's regurgitation of that BS Rasmussen poll), and that they can stonewall and stonewall until Congressional outcry subsides. There's a major difference between informing Congress and subjecting yourself to Congressional oversight (which, of course, is part of Congress' job description).

I wasn't really even for impeachment in this case, as long as the President backed down from this attempt to impose Total Information Awareness on all Americans through the back door. But they don't even want to cooperate with the hearings, yet alone withdraw the policy. Of course, this White House has a lot of past experience with showing a lack of cooperation. They didn't want a Homeland Security Department. They didn't want a 9/11 Commission. Eventually Congress got its way on both counts. Will they on these hearings?